


beneath the sheets of paper lies my truth

by notavodkashot



Series: words are futile devices [5]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Angst, Doomed Relationship, F/M, M/M, The Un-Relationship, The universe refuses to let Cor have good things, Tragedy in the Making
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-24
Updated: 2018-03-24
Packaged: 2019-04-07 11:01:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14079450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notavodkashot/pseuds/notavodkashot
Summary: It would be easier, if the rumors were true.





	beneath the sheets of paper lies my truth

**Author's Note:**

> Birthday fic for myself! So it's pure self-indulgent Cor suffering, because that boy suffers so prettily, I can't help myself. :D

* * *

_beneath the sheets of paper lies my truth_

* * *

In the deepest, quietest, most secret corners of his soul, Cor knew he'd gone to Taelpar Crag to die. 

He'd tried life in Insomnia, the humble pretend-inexistence that was meant to buy him safety and calm, or so his mother had claimed. She'd still died, gutted over non-existent riches they never had. So he'd grabbed his father's swords – she'd never sold them, despite it all, despite the hunger and the rage and her prayers to deaf gods – and left for the front lines, even though he'd sworn to his mother he'd stay and be good and do no harm. It took him a year to crawl from the sewers in Insomnia, across the barren plains in Leide and the swamps in Duscae, to reach the decievingly peaceful plains in Cleigne. He'd learned his trade, by then, arrogance fueled on rage, but the swords were sharp and few things took a second hit to fall. 

He'd been twelve, then, when he stared up the man in worn fatigues and told him he was sixteen and ready to die for his country. 

He'd been thirteen when they'd realized he was too young and too eager to kill for his own sake, and sent him away with the clothes on his back and a jokingly serious threat to shoot him on sight if he ever came back. 

Then the hunters had taken him in, given him a semblance of purpose and... he wasn't okay. He hadn't been okay since the day his father refused to wake up all together, and his mother pretended it didn't happen at all. But he was good at killing things. He was good at fighting. People made jokes about his swords, the short one as long as his right leg, the long one twice as long as he was tall. People made jokes and tried to ruffle his hair for it and then he showed them what he could do and the jokes dried up mighty quick. Caem was wet and salty and miserable, but it was better than Insomnia, it was better than the home he'd burned to the ground on the way out, because it was better to have nowhere to turn back to – and only later, so much later, he'd realize what he'd done, wonder about the lives he might have ruined, taken, over a petty tantrum and a childish need to be dramatic. 

Caem was better than Insomnia, but that was not a very hard thing to accomplish, and when Dave brought news of Taelpar Crag, all hushed whispers and excited rumors, Cor hadn't really cared. Then the rumors grew darker and the whispers solemn, because dozens upon dozens of men and women, some of them hunters, some of them soliders, and some of them people Cor had met before, had gone into the ruins, the so called tempering grounds. And none had returned. Weeks turned into months, and then news came that the King himself was coming to seal the death trap for good. 

In the deepest, quietest, most secret corners of his soul, Cor knew he'd gone to Taelpar Crag to die. 

So no one was more surprised than him, when he walked back into the light, sword set forever missing one, and entire body covered in cuts and scratches as his blood steadily tried to pour out all at once, alongside his broken, purposeless pride. 

He collapsed at the edge of the King's camp, and laughed until he passed out. 

* * *

Recovery was a blur of pain and drugs and magic, because he'd piqued the King's interest with that feat. 

“I must be dying,” he said, delirious with fever, staring at a pair of pale blue eyes that seemed to have been stolen from his own face and placed in someone else's. 

“Don't say that,” the thief who stole his eyes replied, voice hushed and borderline panicked, “you're _not_ going to die.” 

Cor laughed, short, sharp and endlessly painful. 

“Then stop looking at me like I am,” he said, and passed out, because that laugh made the stitches on his side burst wide open again. 

* * *

Her name was Aulea. 

She did for her father what he was now expected to do, for the King: run errands and slit throats and stand still for hours, guarding his back. 

She was very good at the standing still and getting others – including himself – to run the errands and slit the throats for her. She was also very good at filling up silence, humming and singing and telling him things he didn't particularly care about. But since his silence was plagued with memories of howling spirits and the taunting voice of the Blademaster, he welcomed her chatter about nothing at all. So he learned about her father, a shady merchant who'd befriended the King when he'd still been a Prince, and who despite having Royal support, prefered to build his fortune by his own skill and his own tricks. He learned all the ways her father looked after her, gave her anything she wanted, including keeping her around at the heart of danger, because all she wanted was to be by his side. 

Her eyes really were a mirror of his own, though, enough even her father noticed and joked about it. Cor knew where his eyes came from, remembered the glassy look in his father's when he died, so he didn't find the teasing funny at all. 

“What about you, Cor?” She'd ask him, over and over again, never sated despite the fact it always ended the same way. “What was your family like?” 

“I don't remember,” he would reply, every time, toneless voice as he stared straight ahead, “they're dead anyway.” 

She'd roll her eyes – his eyes, only sharper, livelier, not haunted by the ghosts he'd seen in the Crag – and shove sweets into his pockets, precious stolen treats from the provision boxes, because she was, despite it all, her father's daughter. It was that edge, in her, that he liked, the one that knew the pompous ceremony that naturally followed the King around was bullshit. 

He wasn't a Lord and she wasn't a Lady, and it was all too easy to share a look and laugh inwardly at all those poor fools who were. 

* * *

The King's tour through the frontlines was dangerous, and he was often sent out to fight – by the King or his own boredom. And when he returned, she would put him back together, and refuse to give him magic or drugs to dull the pain when she started sewing him shut again, in all the places he'd managed to tear himself apart. 

“Isn't healing supposed to feel better than getting hurt in the first place?” He'd ask her, while she calmly sewed his back closed, with an entirely too large, crooked needle just out of spite. 

“For normal people, yes,” she'd retort, pinching skin shut over sinew and ignoring the way he hissed air through his teeth with each loop of the thread, “but idiots like you need to be trained to not want to get hurt in the first place.” 

Snorting, at that point, only got a sharper tug of thread for his trouble. 

* * *

But, before he knew it, a year had gone by, and they were heading back to Insomnia. 

Cor considered running away, every morning that he woke up closer to it, and every morning Aulea would chat him up like it was nothing – because it was nothing, and despite her taunts she did not have the privilege to live inside his head and know the horrors that lurked there – and before he knew it he'd be wrapped up in the tasks for the day. He could not bear to leave a task half-done, much less leave after he'd started something, so of course he stayed another day. 

And on and on, they went, standing in place, running errands and slitting the occasional throat. 

Cor realized they were friends when he stole a box of chocolate bars and sneaked half of them into her pockets without thinking, rather than hoarding the whole thing for himself. 

It was novel, having a friend. 

It almost made up for being back in Insomnia, and feeling like he was about to break into hives just by breathing the familiar, stagnant air. It certainly helped, along with living in the Citadel, never allowed to stray far away from the King. 

But Insomnia festered inside him: it stank of his mother's blood, of his father's glassy dead stare, of piss and shit and all manner of putrid things. 

He had a friend and he had a duty and most days he was almost sure he had a place. 

He still jumped at the chance to join the Prince's retinue, for the myriad of tasks the King set out for them, among them collecting the relics of his ancestors. 

“I suppose I'll have to learn,” Aulea told him, the day before he left, sharing stolen goods from the grand kitchens that served meals reserved for the King and his son. “To slit throats on my own, I mean.” 

Cor licked his fingers, sitting next to her in one of the many maintenance staircases of the Citadel, far away from any nobleborn Lord or Lady to stare down their nose at them. 

“It gets easier,” he replied, and tried not to image her eyes looking even more like his, with murder weighting them down, “each time.” 

Aulea smiled her lopsided smile, the one that was unladylike and crude and which Cor liked best among them all, because it reached all the way to her soul. 

“So does drinking poison, I hear.” 

* * *

He was a faithless friend, in the end: he mostly forgot about her, swept in the chaos that followed joining Regis' retinue. 

He couldn't write – didn't really know how, not until Weskham started making noises about it and bullied him into learning, dark eyes narrowed in disapproval until he yielded – and he couldn't call, and they were meant to stay under the radar anyway. He thought of her, sometimes, when it got quiet enough he could hear his own thoughts, and he imagined her smiling empty smiles, fingers itching to wreck havoc where they could. 

But then someone would pick a fight with someone else, and Cor would be swept into arguments and taunting and before he knew it, it was time to move, again. 

It was easy to love them, was the thing. 

Regis was kind and serene in a way that reminded Cor of his King, and he commanded loyalty from strangers three words in. Clarus was honest and brash and he treated Cor like a little kid right up until he forgot he was supposed to, and then he was fun to tease and snark at, because he gave back as good as he got. Weskham was sly and vicious and so painfully in love with Regis, Cor was surprised to realize he was the first one to notice, including Regis. 

And then there was Cid. 

Cid never forgot to treat Cor like a kid, no matter how many things he killed or how violently he killed them. He'd yell at him the loudest, over every little thing – usually the ones he was probably not supposed to survive, but that he lived through anyway, mostly out of spite – but he also ruffled his hair whenever he did something right. Cor learned to do a great deal of things, for the sake of Cid's strong, calloused fingers messing up his mop of dark hair. 

Best of all, there were all sorts of memories and jokes and moments that tied them all together, anchored them in place, without the stench of Insomnia or the ghosts of the Crag trying to eat through Cor's soul. 

It was good and nice and so of course it ended up in flames. 

* * *

They were in Accordo, fussing with the details of the joint attempt to strike back against the Empire, when Regis first got congratulated on his engagement. 

Weskham's smile froze over and never really thawed again. 

Cor was angry, not surprised, when they realized Weskham was not aboard the boat taking them back to Insomnia, in the wake of their failure to send the Empire packing. He was angry and vicious, and even heartbroken as he was, Regis appreciated the call-out for what it was, when Cor reached his limit and lashed out at him over the mess they were stuck in, like it was somehow his fault. 

Then Cor decided to pour all his tangled up emotions onto the would-be Queen, whoever she might be, rather than deal with them. 

It hurt less, that way. 

* * *

He didn't recognize her, not until he was unceremoniously reassigned to guard her with his life, and he found a very convincing replica of his eyes staring up at him through a mourning veil. 

“You used to slit throats for me, if I asked nicely enough,” Aulea said, and then took his hands and wrapped them around her own neck, “what's one more between friends?” 

He'd built up enough spite, on the trip home, that he almost expected himself to be able to. It'd be a mercy, at that point, considering Regis was heartbroken and couldn't even bear to look at her. But she wasn't who he'd thought she'd be, Regis' future Queen. She wasn't cruel and selfish and determined to become Queen at the expense of everyone else. 

He knew, because she was his friend and he had the ghost of her hands engraved in the worst of his scars. 

So he resolved to hate her father instead – if he hadn't died, if he hadn't begged the King to keep his daughter safe, the King wouldn't have decided she'd be safest as Regis' wife – because the hate was real and boiling and needed somewhere to go. Then he slid his fingers up her face, tilted it up and pressed his mouth against her forehead. 

“You sound like me,” he told her, watching her eyes – his eyes – fill up with rage and sadness and the bitter realization that nothing could be done to change it, “asking for blood at the first struggle. I thought you were better than that.” 

She wrapped her arms around him, fingers digging viciously into his back, and buried her sobs into his chest. 

“So did I.” 

* * *

The jokes from the old days became the stubborn, unrelenting rumors of today. 

Cor stood at her back, day in and day out, and ignored the steady whispers about the exact nature of their relationship. She was his sister, his cousin, sometimes his twin. He should have probably fought them off, more steadily or at all, but he'd never cared much for the court. 

It was better that they thought that, anyway. 

Because then he could torment himself by offering her the clumsiest bits of his best manners, and no one thought it scandalous when her hand hung off his arm, or she leaned her head against him to give him a judging stare, because she knew exactly what he was doing. 

It was better that way, the court filing away every sliver of affection under the pretense of their nonexistent bloodties, than them realizing what they already knew: that Regis deserved better than the two of them. 

It would have been easy, to do more than stare. It would have been easy. He spent every waking moment and a few of his sleeping ones, with her. He followed her everywhere, everywhere, and they were almost always alone. He was the sum total of the Crownsguard assigned and allowed near her. She was mourning her father, mourning and mourning and trying to stretch it so no one would notice the way the Prince looked ill every time he looked at his future Queen. 

It would have been easy, to tumble into each other, one bad choice after another, because they were both terribly spiteful creatures, lowborn foreigners in a strange, highborn land. 

It would have been easy, but Cor never did things the easy way, and neither did she. 

And if he came to her, sometimes, with teethmarks on his throat and the ghost of fingers bruised on his skin, she'd say nothing and purse her lips. It wasn't fair, of course, that he got to get drunk and stop thinking, falling into the arms of whoever'd have him and not recognize him, and she couldn't. 

But at that point, they knew better than to expect fairness from each other and themselves. 

* * *

“What does Regis like?” Aulea asked him, the day she took off her veil, determined to move on past mourning and tired of waiting for her Prince to grow the spine required to face their problems. 

Weskham, Cor thought, but instead he said: 

“Not you,” because it was true and it made her laugh. 

“Well yes,” she snorted, shaking her head. Her hair had grown long, over the years. It was soft and silk-like, sliding like water between his fingers when he was feeling particularly masochistic and he gave himself the task of brushing it for her. “That's obvious enough. I'm trying to change it, a little bit. I'd like a husband who doesn't loathe the sight of my face.” 

Cor wouldn't loathe the sight of her face, he didn't point out, just like he didn't point out the fact she'd reached out to press a hand to his chest, feeling the steady drum of his heartbeat beneath her fingertips. 

“I'll talk to him,” he ended up saying, like it could hope to make a difference at all, “put in a good word.” 

* * *

Regis trusted Cor's word a lot more than Cor had anticipated, because soon enough their time alone began to be undermined by their time alone with Regis. 

It'd be easier, if he could hate Regis, Cor thought quietly, walking two steps behind them as Aulea held the Prince's hand in hers. It would be easier to give into the jealousy and the ugly, bitter things clogging up his throat. But Regis was the brother he'd never asked for, never wanted and always treasured once he realized it. Regis was fair and calm and generous and kind; in short, a much better man than Cor would ever be. Regis did not deserve his hate, so Cor did the logical thing and chose to hate himself instead, since that was a good deal of hate and no other suitable targets for it. 

* * *

The wedding was exhausting. 

Cor killed six different people, had fourteen detained and actively threatened two dozen more. 

The crowning ceremony was immediately after, and it was even worse. 

Regis named him Marshal and Voice, during the toasting, and Cor wasn't sure it was just the wine talking. 

Afterward, as the sun began to rise in the distance the morning after, he found himself steadily trying to drink enough he'd pass out and hopefully never wake up again. It was better than closing his eyes and imagine Regis fumbling his way through his wedding night. Clarus found him long after he'd run out of tears and was just steadily stewing in that carefully crafted self-loathing he was so good at. He said something oblivious and well-meaning, becase that was what Clarus was best at, and something inside Cor, something frail and battered and endlessly tired, it finally gave up and snapped. 

He should have sobered up when he coaxed Clarus' mouth on him, he really should have, but he only pushed harder after that. 

He should have stopped when Clarus stumbled against his belt, mouth dry and eyes wide, but Cor thought of her laid back on someone else's bed, and shoved Clarus' hand between his legs, purely for the sake of watching him crumble. He knew, even as he did it, that he was going to hate himself in the morning. 

It was fine, he needed new reasons to be sick at himself, anyway. 

* * *

It was Sylvia who figured it out. 

Cor almost welcomed the vicious, furious tongue-lashing that followed his hangover like a miserable encore from hell. 

“Tell me you didn't touch her,” she demanded of him, eyes sharper than his sword, and deadlier too. “Tell me you stupid, stupid child didn't _spoil_ her.” 

He bristled at that, the idea she could be spoiled, that she wasn't perfect just the way she was. He bristled, because he was young and stupid and still hadn't learned that one can't expect to fight the ocean and come out of it unscathed. 

“I didn't fuck her,” he snarled, and braved the pain of her palm against his face for the insolence with little more than a show of fangs, “if that's what you mean. I didn't kiss her. I didn't... _he's my King_ ,” he spluttered, unable to phrase it better. 

“Yes,” Sylvia told him, coolly controlled and terrifyingly unmoved, “he is. You've always followed your King's example, wherever it led you. That's why _your_ wedding's in a fortnight.” 

Cor felt every hair in his body stand on end. 

“No.” 

“He's a new King,” Sylvia snarled at him, standing tall and looming, “he has no foothold with the Council and he's married a lowborn woman on his father's whims. His father, who very nearly cost us the war in the first place. He's young and miserable and inexperienced. If this comes out-” 

“There's nothing to come out,” Cor snarled back, the taste of wine and Clarus stuck to the roof of his mouth, making him nauseous. “We didn't-” 

“His is a lowborn Queen,” Sylvia insisted, like it meant something. “It doesn't matter if you've done nothing, just the idea of it will be enough for them to destroy them.” Her eyes narrowed. “To destroy _her_.” She tilted her chin up, and if someone had ever asked Cor to describe the meaning of godly wrath, he'd point out to that exact moment. “So we'll make sure no one ever has any reason to think anything of the sort. You'll be married in a fortnight and you'll be happy about it.” 

She didn't need to say _or else_. Her threats were far too effective for that kind of thing. 

“Yes, Lady Aurum,” he replied, meek and defeated, and two hours later he was driving past the wall and into the war without looking back. 

Cor never could make up his mind, if she really meant to marry him off, or if she only wanted him gone. He certainly never had the courage to just ask. 

* * *

The Marshal of the Crownsguard could go anywhere he wanted, and be welcomed. He could join any battle, fight any enemy, be as ruthless and vicious as he wanted. It was the best worst thing Regis had ever done for him. 

Ironically, the more he was welcomed, among soldiers, the more they looked up to him and spread whispers about his feats of strength and prowess, the more Cor yearned for the simple existence of a hunter. To make an honest living without having to suffer through anyone's expectations. To get well and trully drunk, and then well and trully fucked, without anyone getting constipated about it. 

“You're running away from something,” Kimya would tell him, whenever she hired him to thin out the monsters around the thicket, “and I think it might be yourself.” 

Cor was an expert at avoiding the obvious truth, by then. 

* * *

He was a faithless friend, and an even more faithless not-lover. 

He hadn't meant to fall in love. He was out there in penance for being the miserable, worthless shitstain he was, a failure to his King and a shame for the woman he loved. He hadn't meant to find solace in someone's wry smiles or to let anyone unravel his silences into something comfortable. 

He was the worst kind of person in the world, he decided, the day he woke up in someone's arms and didn't feel the urge to hurl, instead letting himself fall in deeper and even willing himself to never leave. 

Evan made him happy, dry wit and idle tangents. 

Cor knew better than to believe he deserved it. 

“You're thinking again,” Evan would tell him, when the guilt started boiling over his skin, mouth pressed to the back of his throat, “some of us are trying to sleep, Cor.” 

That was usually his cue to grab his sword and head out for the next outpost, to massacre imperial forces and add another notch to the ridiculous legend he seemed to be inescapably doomed to have. The thing Cor loved most about Evan, besides the amber freckles in his green eyes and the precise way his voice wrapped around his name, was the fact he let him go. That he didn't ask him to be safe or come back at all. It was that hateful, contrary nature of his, Cor reckoned, that the less Evan asked of him, the more he was desperate to give him. 

It was a good enough life, for him, to exist in a constant roll of guilt and love and murder. 

He even made the mistake to think it'd last him forever. 

* * *

Cor was a very different man, when he came back to Insomnia in answer to Regis' summons – and his sincerest promise that he wasn't getting married the moment he crossed the wall. Quieter, calmer, resigned to his guilt and selfish enough to not cast it away. He was assigned to guard the Queen and he didn't turn around and ran away screaming when it happened. 

“I've decided the rumors are true,” Aulea told him, her back turned to him, as she rummaged around, “that we really are brother and sister, and that I love you as a sister should love her brother.” 

Cor laughed around the ball of spikes and despair lodged firmly in his throat. 

“You've decided,” he said, and held her stare when she looked over her shoulder at him, hair longer still than he remembered, but still soft and liquid as it fell down her shoulders. “So it must be so?” 

She stared at him, eyes pale blue, wiser and deeper than his ever could be, and reached a hand, as she used to, to press it against the echo of his heart. 

“I love you,” she told him, blunt and terrible and he didn't weep for it because he was stronger than that. 

“You're a vicious, terrible creature, Aulea Lucis Caelum,” he told her, holding her face in his hands and leaning in until they were breathing the same air. “Of course you're blood of my blood,” he said, forcing himself to press his lips to her forehead, rather than bite off her mouth, “you couldn't be anything else.” 

“I love you,” she insisted, burying her face into his chest, fingers digging into his back. “I love you, I love you, I love you.” 

And maybe at some point, she stopped sounding like she meant it, and meant it like she wanted it to sound. It was agony, either way. 

* * *

“Do you even know the meaning of regret?” Clarus asked him one day, four months into his wife's pregnancy and finally convinced he could drink with Cor and not fall into bed with him again, now that he was married and expectant and besotted all around. 

He'd almost forgiven Cor for missing his wedding, those years he was gone fighting for the chance to finally get killed. 

“Of course I do,” Cor replied, swirling his beer with a wry twitch to his lips and thought of the gorgeous black sword Aulea had commissioned for his birthday. “It's the one thing I'm good at.” 

Clarus looked like he wanted to argue and then asked him to be godfather to his firstborn son. 

Cor accepted because at that point... what else could have he done? 

* * *

Cor wrote Evan letters every Thursday, short and sharp and without everything he desperately wanted to say. 

He procrastinated visiting as he'd promised he would, justified by the war and the danger and the way his not-sister's mouth curled around his name, like a leash around his throat. So he wrote letters instead, to fill the empty spaces he'd left behind, and buy some more time to figure out what the hell he was doing with his life. 

Sometimes, he even got letters back. 

And then. 

“I'm pregnant,” Aulea told him, voice hushed and eyes stuck on the mirror as she dressed herself for the day. 

Evan's dead, Cor didn't tell her, even though he'd meant to, even though he still had the letter, cold and poisonous, hanging of his fingers. 

“Congratulations,” he said, and then excused himself to spend the day too drunk to think. 

She was gracious enough to not ask. 

* * *

The nightmares started around the fifth or sixth month, dragging her back to alertness with her hands wrapped protectively around her belly. Cor started sleeping in a chair by the window, convinced by her paranoia to not leave her alone, ever, though he didn't need much convincing to sit there and watch her sleep. She probably knew he was thinking about wrapping his hands around her throat, after all. 

“I need you to do something for me,” she told him, after a night of particularly fitful sleep, eyes bloodshot and jaw set. 

“Anything,” he replied, because it was the truth. 

“I need you to take me to Ravatogh and the Vesperpool and the old tower ruins in Duscae, too.” She swallowed hard. “It can't wait... and no one must know we've left. No one at all.” 

Cor stared down at her, taking in her sunken eyes and the way her hair was knotted and messy and not at all smooth as it tumbled down her shoulders. 

“You want me to take you, the Queen, who is very much pregnant, into enemy territory,” he said, because perhaps he hadn't really heard right the first time. “Without letting anyone know I'm doing that.” 

Aulea stared at him, pointedly, viciously, and nodded. 

“Yes.” 

Cor licked his lips. 

“You realize that even if by some miracle we survive this, Regis will _still_ want my head on a platter for it,” he said and then felt his breathing hitch when she took a hand and pressed it against the swell of the child growing inside her. 

“Yes,” she said, and held his hand there, nails digging into his skin. “My son's life depends on it.” 

Cor let out a slow, steady breath. 

“Okay.” 

He'd been trying to get killed for years now, anyway. 

* * *

He lost count of the daemons and the monsters and the nosy MTs that followed them everywhere. 

Costlemark. 

Steyliff. 

Pitioss. 

He should have asked about the ruins she led him to, unmarked in any map. 

He should have asked about the prayers, her tongue tripping over vowels in a language he did not understand. 

He should have asked about the light and the magic and the fact her hair grew streaks of white after every offering. 

“It should be enough,” she'd say, after she was done and they waited for night to see if the runes lit up as they should, red and ominous in the dark. “It's more than enough,” she'd say, and Cor almost believed her, as she huddled against his side, and he marveled how happy he'd have been to sit this way with her, some ten years prior, and how sick it made him, now. 

* * *

He should have died, upon their return to Insomnia. 

Regis did not love his Queen, but he loved his unborn son, and Cor had put him in not insignificant danger with his actions. Clarus had certainly looked willing to murder, when he laid eyes on Cor, standing defiant behind his Queen's back, as always. 

But then Aulea had sent all but Regis and Cor away, and she'd explained herself and the truth of the child she carried in her womb. And Regis had fallen to his knees, weeping against her belly with the certainty that child's destiny would be death. 

All was forgiven, in the face of that truth, a secret sworn to them by the Queen herself. 

“There's something else, isn't there,” Cor told her, as they returned to her quarters, strange and unfamiliar after weeks in the wilderness, rushing madly across the country to gather the blessings she'd sought out. “Something else you didn't tell him.” 

Aulea paused, brushing knots out of her hair, and looked at him over her shoulder. 

“Why do you think that?” She asked, in the quiet tones that let him know he was right. 

Cor reached a hand to take the brush from hers, and laughed. 

“Because it's what I'd do.” 

Aulea laughed and wept and told him exactly what she'd done, how she'd convinced him to kill her without meaning to. 

* * *

Noctis Lucis Caelum was born on a windy afternoon. 

Cor scratched the paint of the Regalia from end to end, driving Regis to the hospital in time to greet his son into the world. 

He expected sadness or rage or that bitter disappointment to nestle in his gut, when they put the boy in his arms. He didn't know why he kept expecting his emotions to do anything or make any sense. The moment he stared at those damning blue eyes, he felt another leash wrap around his throat. 

“What happens next?” Cor asked Aulea, sitting on the uncomfortable armchair by her bed, watching the young Prince nurse sleepily at her. 

Aulea brushed her fingers along her son's black fuzz and smiled. It was crooked and lopsided and hooked itself on Cor's navel and tore him open in one swing. 

“Now we wait and hope and tell ourselves we've done the best we could.” 

Cor buried his face in his hands, and laughed, too exhausted to even try and cry. 

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> Come hang out on [DW](https://notavodkashot.dreamwidth.org/) or [Twitter](https://twitter.com/notavodkashot), if you'd like.


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